Earliest known appearance in print, attributed to Thomas Jefferson: 2003[3]

Other attributions: Witold Gombrowicz (1904-1969), Polish writer

Status: We currently have no evidence to confirm that Thomas Jefferson ever said or wrote, "Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you." This can be unequivocally attributed to Witold Gombrowicz. How it came to be attributed to Thomas Jefferson is unclear.

Footnotes

↑ To establish the earliest appearance of this phrase in print, the following sources were searched for the phrase, "Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.": Google Books, Google Scholar, Amazon.com, Internet Archive, JSTOR.